


dragon's song

by pprfaith



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Did I mention dragons?, Dragons, Found Family, Gen, Lore - Freeform, M/M, Magical Realism, Myths & Legends, Not Beta Read, One-Shot, season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 17:21:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19361302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: “So tell me, Princess Grace, has your father ever told you the story of the dragons?” Chin asks, tweaking her nose as he watches her get settled into her bed at Steve’s place.





	dragon's song

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely set in season one and looking back, that might actually be because I wrote this _while season one aired_. That's how far back in the 'unfinished' folder that was. I slapped a sort of ending onto it. I hope you don't hate it. Ciao.

+

****

+

It’s a bright, calm morning in Hawaii, the silence of the mostly-asleep only disturbed by the low grunts of pain from a woman pushingpushingpushing her baby girl into this world.

“Almost, baby, almost,” her husband cheers, his hand clutched in hers, his forehead marred by worry. This is her first birth and it is a hard one. “Just hold on a little longer.”

Outside, the ocean crashes against the shore with a hiss and a rumble, before pulling back, returning, pulling back and – 

Pulling further back, further, further. 

Water recedes from the beaches, from the rocky shore, from steep cliffs, just pulls back into itself like a tensing muscle. Old men in their fishing boats stiffen and curse before calling out Tsunami warnings to all those who will listen.

The water recedes further. 

The woman’s screams grow louder.

That morning, the water drops almost fifteen feet. Everywhere. In Hawaii, in California, on Russian shores, Japanese shores, British shores.

All the oceans, all the water, it pulling back, as if taking a deep breath. Preparing. Preparing to exhale. But the storm never comes.

Decades later, scientists still puzzle over where all the water went that day.

In a hospital room less than a mile from the water, a newborn Kono Kalakaua spits a mouthful of saltwater onto the shirt of the midwife who helped birth her. 

In the exact same instant, the water returns.

No-one ever makes the connection.

+

Long before he becomes a cop himself, Chin visits the HPD family picnic every year, with his father, his uncles, his older cousins. They have the law in their blood, his grandfather jokes.

When he is seven, Chin sits next to his mother, slurping shave-ice when, suddenly, he tenses, eyes going into the middle distance.

“Honey,” his mother asks, “Did you see one of your friends?”

For a moment, the boy doesn’t react. Then he shakes his head, waves her concern off and goes back to his ice-cream with the single-minded determination of the blissfully innocent. 

As soon as his mother relaxes enough to take her eyes off him, he puts the plastic cup down and slips down to the ground.

His feet make no sound as he lands and no dust rises as he jogs away. Because he wills it so. He slips to one side of the crowd and the trees above twist so their shadows will hide him. Because he wills it so. 

He finds what he is looking for in a quiet space between two tall, old trees. A woman, a beautiful, dark-haired haloe woman, is playing ball with a little boy of maybe two. He looks like an exact copy of her, dark hair, dark eyes, summer smile. 

The boy misses the ball and it rolls toward a slope, gaining speed faster than the boy’s little legs can carry him. Chin shifts the ground minutely, watches as the ball describes an unlikely curve and rolls to a halt at his feet. 

He picks it up just as the toddler crashes into his legs and they land in a cloud of dirt. For a brief moment – the blink of an eye, really – the dirt hangs suspended in midair, particles floating, turning, catching the light. 

Air and earth saying hello.

Then gravity reasserts itself and the dirt falls. The boy makes a delighted noise. “Steve,” he pipes up, with a lisp that is absolutely adorable.

“Chin,” Chin provides as he sits up, arranging the smaller body to sit on his legs with long practice born of having too big a family. 

Behind Steve, his mother finally gets over her surprise, hiding a baffled look behind a brilliant smile. She will wonder later, about the ball, about her son’s attack of a complete stranger, about the seven-year-old who is willing to spend his day playing with a toddler he’s never met before. Later. “What just…”

Chin returns her smile, holds up the ball, and asks, rather quickly, “Can I play with you?”

+

Danny is thirteen and sulking in his room. His bratty kid-brother is trying to kick down the door. “Damn it, Danny! It’s my room, too! Let me in!”

Snarling at the door, Danny flicks open the lighter he’s been playing with, watches it catch, watches the flame burst into life. It tingles down his spine. Matty screams louder. Danny snaps the lighter close, flips it open again. Close. Open. Close. Open. 

Watch the flame. 

Matty curses. 

“Mom’s gonna wash your mouth out with soap, moron! Shut up!”

“Let me in!”

Close. Open. Close. Open. 

With a flick of his wrist, he catches the dying flame as the lighter snaps shut again, lets it dance across the tips of his fingers, the back of his hand. It climbs up his arms in a warm, lazy crawl, crackling quietly. Speaking to him in his own voice. 

“Danny!!!”

He fucking hates being a kid right now, he decides, as the flame climbs into his hair, hides behind his ear, shy and eager. He snuffs it out with a thought as he stands to unlock the door. 

Before the brat kicks it in. Damn him anyway.

+

Baby Kalakaua has been passed around the family’s arms for hours already when she finally makes it through to a gangly, teenaged Chin. She fusses crankily, annoyed at being groped by all and sundry, peeved by the aunties chatting up a storm in the kitchen.

But then Chin closes long arms around her and suddenly she’s silent, blinking up at him in something like recognition.

Outside the window, stray droplets from the kiddie pool arc, catching the light in impossible rainbows of color before hitting the ground like stars, impacting on hard soil. Where they land, flowers bloom.

Chin smiles at the baby, whispering, “Hello again, sister.”

+

Kono is clinging to Chin’s leg like a particularly stubborn growth as he ambles down the beach, leaving behind friends who don’t understand why he’d rather spend time with a four-year-old than them.

He doesn’t bother trying to explain. 

Steve appears out of nowhere – out of thin air – like he is wont to do, and picks up Kono upside down, causing her to shriek in childish delight before the _other_ in her reasserts itself and she hisses, “Put me down, you brute!”

The words sound ridiculous out of her tiny mouth, but Steve rights her anyway, sitting her on his hip. She huffs, but accepts it because she rather likes being taller. 

Chin smiles at them both before sitting in the warm sand. Tiny dust devils rise momentarily before Steve blows gently at them and they disperse. He grins smugly and then quickly turns to flee as Chin glowers at him. 

He runs, Kono on his hip, perfectly balanced even at twelve. Chin knows, from long experience, that not even an earthquake will trip Steve, who holds himself upright with the air itself. 

He splashes into the shallows where he drops his burden and the two of them gear up for a water fight as Chin draws closer, already knowing he’s going to lose and not minding.

Together, those two have always created the most glorious storms.

+

Danny’s been a police officer for exactly three months when a meth lab blows up with him in it. His partner and their two suspects die immediately. Him, the flames never even touch, bending and twisting to leave an empty space where he stands.

Some of them lick at his skin, caress his face, but none burn. Danny is no masochist.

But he can’t walk out of the flames like this and the fire is sucking in all the air and he feels himself getting dizzydizzydizzier. He goes to his knees with a grunt, eyelids fluttering.

 _Please_ he flings into the world, silently, impossibly loud.

Elsewhere, Steve sits up in bed, surprised but quick to react and flings himself forward, outward, toward. 

Somewhere in New Jersey, Danny breathes. He inhales deeply, stands, finds a supply closet to lock himself into. He’ll pretend he was in there when the building blew. Dumb luck, sheer dumb luck.

Around him, embers dance in their air, just a bit too long to seem natural. “Yeah,” he mutters, “I missed you, too.”

In Annapolis, Steve grins into the dark.

+

Before he jumps into the water, Steve mutters a little phrase in pidgin. His comrades think it’s a prayer, tease him for being an island boy. 

They don’t know that the language doesn’t matter, that his words could be spoken in any language. There is no faith attached to them but he never tells them that. 

They don’t need to know and they wouldn’t understand.

“Let me in, little sister,” he whispers to the cool deep, always, before setting foot in it anywhere but home, where he knows he has her permission, her love.

And always the waves lapping at his boots laugh, “Of course.”

+

Kono is sixteen when she loses her virginity to a boy with cinnamon skin and water in his blood. She can hear the ocean every time she puts her ear to his chest and loves him for it.

Afterwards, sticky and covered in sand, she runs into the water to wash herself clean, drifts there, naked on her back in the moonlight.

The boy – she can’t remember his name even a month later – follows her, runs hands over her body in wonder. “You’re a goddess,” he tells her, reverently.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she answers as she rights herself, treading water, “I’m a dragon.”

Chin is waiting in her bedroom when she gets home, a pained expression on his face. 

“Don’t give me that look,” she tells him, stripping down to take a shower and wash the salt from her hair. “You’re the one who insists that we’re _cousins_ this time around.”

She pretends she can’t feel his eyes on her as she slips naked into the bathroom, pretends she can’t feel the anger thrumming under her feet with every touch to the tiled floor.

+

The day his father is stabbed to death in the line of duty, Chin runs. 

He runs out of the house, down the street and into the forest, runs up and up and up a mountain until he reaches the summit. There he sits, his fists pressed into the rich, moist soil, and screams.

He screams until his throat is raw and his grief bearable because this life is not his first, this father not his only, but he is the kindest. Was. Was the kindest. Grief tastes raw in every form, in every life. He hates it and screams it into the world until the ground shakes enough to draw the attention of the humans in the valleys and their instruments.

 _Do you want help?_ a voice from below asks and he feels magma stir, sluggish and hungry and hot, willing to burn the world if that is what he asks. Willing to erase the island that killed his father from all maps. 

He pulls his hands from the ground, pulls his emotions back inside. The earthquake subsides. The volcano at his back belches.

 _No,_ he answers, because his father would not want him to. He believed in forgiveness, not destruction. _Thank you_ , he adds. 

For the offer. For caring. For pulling him back. 

_Anytime._

Then, suddenly, wind whips above his head, bringing impossibly dark clouds that break and pour rain down onto his head. Lightning crackles and hits a tree close by. Impossibly, the soaked, living wood catches fire, dancing merrily despite the storm.

Until dawn, wind and water and fire keep him company.

+

Danny doesn’t mean to have Grace.

Doesn’t mean to put part of himself into her. 

But he is so stupidly, so madly in love the night he and Rachel create her and there are candles, a hundred of them, scattered all over. He pulls their heat into himself without noticing and expels it again, so bright, so hot. He falls out of his mortal shell and into fire, into every flame in every darkened cave in this world. Stars explode and that is fire, too.

The next morning, half awake, he blinks at his girlfriend only to see a tongue of flame lick at her smooth, creamy belly.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

The flame laughs, dancing close to his hand when he skims it across the space between his body and Rachel’s. 

_Daddy_ it sings.

Fuck.

+

Cath is good about Steve’s quirks, which might have something to do with how little time they actually spend in each other’s company. Still. She accepts that he sometimes laughs out loud for no reason in the shower and that he can stare at candle flames for hours, a dopey smile on his face. She doesn’t even mind that he pats the ground fondly whenever he plops down to sit on it. 

But she teases Steve about being an esoteric yoga whole wheat freak every time she catches him sitting cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed, mind a million miles away.

He tells her meditation is good for his body, for his concentration, for his chi. He tells her and lets her rib him mercilessly. 

He lets her have her fun with a smile and an eye roll, never bothering to explain that he seems a million miles away because he is, his mind cast into the air currents dancing above the clouds, drifting along, drifting _toward_.

He checks on Mary first, then his father, then the _others_. He checks on Cath, too, when she’s not with him, on a few friends who come and go. He brushes a breeze past their skin, blows a kiss on their cheeks and takes his leave again.

Out of all the people he checks on, only three stop whatever they’re doing to turn their face to the sky and smile briefly.

“Hey, brah,” Chin says, head tilted to one side, returning the quiet visit with a soft tremor of the earth, just enough for Steve to feel the vibration halfway around the world.

Hello, there.

+

Grace is born with eyes as dark as her mother’s, skipping the typical baby blues completely. Danny holds her close for the first time when she’s barely two minutes old and coos at her under his breath in a language none on this earth have spoken since the dragons walked.

She stops wailing just long enough for her deep brown eyes to flash a brighter auburn, fire in the dark.

 _Oh,_ he asks the flicker of fire he can feel under her skin, _what am I going to do with you, my little miracle?_

+

 

When Chin gets framed for taking that money, everyone asks Kono why she’s sticking with the traitor, the dirty cop.

And Kono tells them, a hundred times, a thousand times, that Chin would never take that money. She doesn’t care what evidence they have. He never would.

She never tells them that even if he had taken the money, it would change nothing. Chin is hers as she is his. 

Earth and water, the solid and the fluid, they exist next to each other like twins, separate but same. Always have, always will. 

“You’ve always been too close to him,” her mother says one evening at dinner and Kono pushes back her chair, jumps to her feet, marches out. She bites her lip so she’ll keep silent, doesn’t defend herself or Chin.

She just runs out of the house, finds him at the beach, sinks next to him into the sand that feels like an embrace. She churns under the surface, a hurricane waiting to unleash. He trembles, an earthquake waiting to happen. 

Both of them bite back on their fury but here, now, even together, they are lonely. Alone. Kono has alienated most of the family and no-one is speaking to Chin anymore.

 _Where are you guys?_ she wonders into the night, sending a memory of Steve’s laughter with it, a flash of a face in last week’s bonfire. Brothers. Family. 

_Ohana_ , they call it here, where the elements are so close together. 

Down the beach, a driftwood fire flares and a warm breeze brushes Kono’s hair out of her face. Chin inhales, then exhales. Something in him relaxes.

+

When Grace is a year old, barely, Danny flicks open the lighter he always carries and picks the flame up with nimble fingers, feeds it, whispers to it before kneeling down in front of his daughter and offering it to her.

She reaches for it with a shriek of delight, pudgy fists cutting through it like it’s cool water instead of hot fire. 

He helps her flatten one hand, palm up, and gently puts the flame into it, gives it to her to play with. 

It gutters and dies after only a moment. He gives her another spark, and another and another, gives her sparks whenever Rachel’s not around, but she never manages to hold onto them. 

Child of fire, untouched by it, unable to touch it. It’s fascinating and not a little scary. Male or female, he’s never had made child like her, a child made from _himself_ instead of just the DNA of his mortal body.

Then, when she’s just seven, Rachel comes home from work too early. She said she’d have to work overtime again. He knows she’s screwing the boss but never complains. He has Grace and she’s all he needs of this family. 

But she comes home too early, finds him sitting on the living room floor, directing half a dozen fireballs through the room while their precious daughter is chasing them, shrieking with joy every time she catches one, only for it to slip through her fingers again. For a moment, Rachel stands frozen.

Then she starts screaming.

After that, things go very wrong.

+

It’s dark by the time they finish up with the lawyers, although the meeting didn’t take long at all. Apparently, relinquishing all parental rights to your only child is really simple, when you get right down to it. 

Grace sat silently on his lap the entire time Rachel signed the papers, clinging to Danny like she’d die if she let go. 

She doesn’t understand why mommy doesn’t want her anymore. She is too young to see the fear in Rachel’s eyes when she looks at Danny, looks at his offspring. 

Fire. 

She never should have seen that.

But she could have tried to take Grace away from him, could have tried to _save_ her and he’s pathetically, idiotically glad she didn’t. She couldn’t raise Grace alone. Not his fire child. 

Grace is crying by the time they step into the dark street, and on her lawyer’s arm, Rachel is too. A sharp, cold wind blows down the street, stirring autumn leaves. Grace peeks out from where she’s hiding her face against his shoulder just long enough to look around, confused.

“Can you feel that, Monkey?” he asks, not surprised to see her nod.

Across the street, a tall, dark haired-man in dark clothing leans against a wall, face painted in shadow. He blows, as if exhaling cigarette smoke, and another gust of wind comes rushing.

Danny is stupidly glad Steve is here.

 _You should come to Hawaii_ , he murmurs, his voice coming from everywhere. _She could grow up surrounded by family._

“Danno?” Grace asks, wiping at her cheeks.

Across the street, Steve lets himself be swallowed by shadow.

+

 _And when are you coming home, brah?_ Chin whispers to a grain of sand before releasing it to blow away on the sea breeze.

_As soon as I’ve finished this mission._

Chin is kind enough not to mention that the ‘mission’ has been going for almost five years already. There is something more than human to the Hesse brothers. Has to be, for them to evade Steve for so long.

+

Why Hawaii?

For weeks, everyone asks him that and he lies, tells them that it’s best for Grace. A clean start in a place where she’s not constantly reminded of her mother.

Mention of Rachel is enough to make everyone nod in understanding. 

It’s unfair to her, but Danny doesn’t care. 

He doesn’t want to move to Hawaii. He likes his life, his family, his siblings and parents and friends. He likes this city, rundown and boring, in its own, mortal way. 

But Grace is eight years old and he still doesn’t understand just what it is he created in her. Hawaii is where the others are. Hawaii is the one place on earth where all elements are equal, where they can meet on equal footing and balance each other. The one place left that’s still wild, in its own way. There is still magic there where it has been leeched out of the rest of the world by industry and cold steel and a thousand generations of humanity.

In Hawaii, they can help each other. Stop each other. 

It’s the best place for Grace to be. 

_And you, too, _the water in the kitchen sink bubbles.__

___We let ourselves be born to be free of each other,_ he points out._ _

__A laugh. _As if we ever are.__ _

__+_ _

__Steve finishes the mission. He shoots Anton Hesse in the neck and buries his father five days later, bruises from the attack still mottling his skin._ _

__Danny shows up at his father’s house – his house – only hours later._ _

__“Detective Danny Williams, HPD, blah blah, you can’t be in here, it’s an active crime scene, blah,” he introduces himself, human formalities without meaning._ _

__Steve ignores the words, the familiar, biting heat, and steps into Danny’s space, inhales._ _

__Exhales._ _

__“I missed you,” he says._ _

__He loves Chin and he loves Kono, but like they balance each other, he and Danny strengthen each other. They go together, two parts of a whole, slotting into place._ _

__There’s four of them, not three._ _

__Danny slings a loose arm around his waist, leans his head against Steve’s collarbone and lets them be. Around them, the air crackles with dry heat and the promise of firestorms._ _

__+_ _

__“So tell me, Princess Grace, has your father ever told you the story of the dragons?” Chin asks, tweaking her nose as he watches her get settled into her bed at Steve’s place._ _

__Behind him, in the doorway, Kono chuckles quietly as she finishes firing a status report at Steve and Danny, who are in a meeting with the governor._ _

__Grace’s eyes grow wide as she shakes her head, movements speeding up as she gets situated fast, so Chin will start telling the story._ _

__“Alright,” he laughs, leaning his head against Kono’s belly as she comes to a halt behind him, wraps her arms around his shoulders. “Do you know how many elements there are in the world, Princess Grace?”_ _

__“Four,” she chirps. “Fire, water, air and…”_ _

__“Earth. Exactly. And these elements are what the world is made of. One day, very long ago, the elements came together, and they made this world. Without them, it wouldn’t exist. And for the longest time after, they were content to just sit back, and watch the world grow. They watched the little creatures that swam in Water’s belly, that flew on Air’s breath, warmed themselves at Fire’s side and walked on Earth’s back. But after a long, long time, they got sad. Do you know why?”_ _

__Grace shakes her head, riveted._ _

__“Because they got lonely. They only had each other to talk to and even though they loved each other very much, they wanted to meet the little creatures that lived in their world. So they decided to make themselves bodies, the bodies of dragons, because, you see, it was the age of dragons, back then.”_ _

__“Dinosaurs,” Grace breathes. Far too smart for her own good._ _

__“One of them was blue, one red, one green and the last one silvery-grey, like the storm clouds in the sky. And they lived among other dragons for an entire dragon life, and when they died, the returned to their place, outside the world. And for a while, they weren’t lonely anymore because they had the memory of life as dragons. But then, after a time, they wanted to be born _again_ , so they picked new forms, and they came back into the world. And since then, every time they get lonely, the dragons come back to live new lives. Sometimes they are dragons. Sometimes they are animals. And sometimes, they are even human.”_ _

__“How do you recognize them?”_ _

__Kono’s arms tighten around his shoulders, but Chin simply smiles. “You can feel them,” he answers, “like a little tingle down your spine.”_ _

__“Like the one I get when you, and Danno and Uncle Steve are around?”_ _

__“Exactly like that,” Kono laughs, her blunt nails digging into his chest._ _

__Grace’s smile is blinding as she whispers, “Oh.”_ _

__+_ _

__There is a bomb around Chin Ho’s neck and Steve asks, utterly silent and serious, _Do you want to go?__ _

__“No,” Chin answers out loud._ _

__Okay._ _

__Danny goes to yell everyone another block away, backed up by Steve’s ramblings about blast radius and collateral damage. HPD, the EMTs, the fire department, they all go._ _

__They go and they all kneel around Chin, pretending to fiddle with the bomb while really, all their eyes are closed. There will be no spark unless Danny allows it, no vibration unless Chin wills it and Steve and Kono exhale, long and slow, water from air, cold from the bottom of the ocean._ _

__The ring around Chin’s neck grows heavy with ice and then the metal cracks, brittle as clay, and breaks._ _

__Danny’s eyelids flutter and Steve rests a hand on his shoulder, pushing him on. Victor Hesse dies in a bloom of fire on the Pali highway, racing toward escape._ _

__+_ _

__“Come on, Danny! Water’s great!”_ _

__“Ha, ha,” he calls down from the safety of the lanai. “You’re not funny, Kalakaua!”_ _

__Next to him, Steve licks his finger, presses it against Danny’s arm and makes a pitiful sizzling noise, like a dying fire. Danny smacks him upside the head just because he can._ _

__+_ _

__“Do you hear that?” the little CIA analyst asks, looking up from the laptop she’s using to put all the pieces together for Steve._ _

__“Hear what?” he asks as he watches her spin in a slow circle, presumably looking for the source of whatever she’s hearing._ _

__She stops, blinks up at him through chunky glasses that fit her much better than the designer suit did. She shakes her head, waving him off. “I thought I heard the wind.”_ _

__He takes an involuntary step closer, head cocked to one side. Could she… “Chin,” he calls, making her jump._ _

__Chin comes out of his office at a brisk pace, curious expression on his face. “Yeah, boss?”_ _

__“Kaye here,” Steve provides, “thinks she can hear the wind.”_ _

__“Nooo,” she shakes her head, slowly, listening hard. “It’s like…a rumble, now. Like… an earthquake?”_ _

__Curioser and curioser._ _

__She hears fire, later, when she meets Danny, a low crackling sound. Hear the ocean rushing when Kono comes slipping into the room. It’s been such a long time since either of them have run across a sensitive like Jenna, they don’t really know what to do with her._ _

__“I vote we keep her,” Kono decides after a week of the blonde flitting in and out of the office, guileless and sweet and honest in a way few things ever are anymore._ _

__So they do._ _

__+_ _

__One evening, Grace is sitting on the beach behind their house, the house all four of them have moved into, at some point, one by one, until all their things were just _there_._ _

__(“We always do this, you realize. Why, exactly, do we insist on being born separately?”_ _

__“Three to one island isn’t exactly separate, now shut up.”_ _

__“Make me.”)_ _

__Dusk is blooming behind her and her hands are stuck in the fire Danny made, up to the wrist. Flames lick at her skin, dance along her fingers. She giggles because it tickles._ _

__Jenna watches from across the pit, fascinated. Kamekona, who never needed to be told, who just looked at them in turn and then grinned, widely, occasionally makes her hold a marshmallow or two for him._ _

__Steve and Danny are curled together on a nearby log while Chin and Kono are chasing each other through the surf like children._ _

__It’s as peaceful as they’ve gotten in… centuries, probably. Maybe millennia._ _

__Until Grace pulls her hands from the fire, shaking them as if wet and asks, into the descending dark, “Will you ever go back to being dragons?”_ _

__Steve looks at Danny._ _

__Danny looks at Steve._ _

__Behind them, the sound of play stops. They have never talked about it. About their first form, so much closer to what they truly are, so much more powerful and capable and awful._ _

__So much more monstrous._ _

__Their cycles come faster and faster with each life because they have gotten used to being flesh, being real, and it has been so long since they have been truly other._ _

__Steve shrugs, pilfers a marshmallow. “Yes,” he says._ _

__Because one day, the volcanoes under their feet will roar their terrible roar and the earth will shake and the oceans will rage and storm will shake this world to its roots._ _

__One day, this world they made will be unmade and they will be there when that day comes._ _

__“Will you remember me?” Grace asks, with all the innocence of a ten-year-old, all the wisdom of a child of fire._ _

__Danny goes over to her, drops to his knees in front of her and opens his arms. She falls into them._ _

__“Always,” he promises._ _

__It’s nothing but the truth._ _

__+_ _

**Author's Note:**

> *ducks and runs*


End file.
